Lumber and words …

… Nicholson Baker’s Deep Dives. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

If you hadn’t already known what a lumber room was, you might reasonably picture a room filled with our modern idea of lumber—wooden boards lying flat. But there are older senses of lumber that have nothing to do with wood. Some dictionaries ascribe a connection of lumber to Lombard, referring to a type of money lending that originated in Lombardy, Italy in the Middle Ages, in which lenders, barred from charging interest by the Church, essentially operated like pawnbrokers. Their shops became storehouses for the items held as collateral, some of which never found its way back home. Lumber just wears its heaviness in every sense.